so show me where my armour ends, show me where my skin begins
by a vegetable
Summary: "I beat up a guy." He replies through a mouthful of bloody tissue and swollen lips. You scowl at him, clutching the material of his shirt in your grasp. "And also his friends." T for mild violence and brief mention of homophobic language.


_A/N: Title from Pluto by Sleeping At Last. Also, two culture issues I need to cover: unlike the US in the UK every school has a compulsory school uniform and as a Brit I find it easier to write them as wearing uniforms at school; and, what you call soccer, we call football, so Dirk being hit by a football in England is Dirk getting hit by a soccer ball in America. Trigger Warning for slight homophobic language._

Dirk Strider bruises like a peach, this you know, so seeing him covered in bruises head to toe is not uncommon. He can have huge expanses of purple and blue running up his shins from simply hitting his leg on the corner of a coffee table. Once during training someone had kicked the football straight at him, and as it bounced off of his ribs an enormous grey bruise was already forming over his freckled torso. Most often he has bruises around his neck and shoulders, and they're small and red and placed in a well thought out pattern. You are the cause of these bruises, with your slickened teeth and lips, and Dirk says he doesn't mind those ones.

His uniform is ruffled when you see him that afternoon, there's a rip in his collar and his tie has been pulled so loose it may as well be hanging undone around his neck. There is no trace of the red bruises around his neck then, and he is covered in black and blue and purple. His nose is bleeding and his eye swells beneath the ice he holds to it. His knuckles look broken and mud cakes his shirt and trousers. His sweater lies neglected on the seat next to him, ripped and in dire need of replacement.

The clock ticks above him like it's judging him, and the door to the head teacher's office remains firmly closed as he sits alone on the seats outside the varnished cherry wood.

You give him a look to crumble mountains before collapsing in a chair beside him, hands worrying to his chest and shoulder and arms. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbow, and covered in blood; you'd hate to have been there when he'd been bleeding.

"Jumping Jehoshaphat, Dirk, what the heck happened to you?" you try not to shout, but your voice is strained against the back of your throat as he leans slightly against your touch, "Are you alright, mate?"

"I beat up a guy." He replies through a mouthful of bloody tissue and swollen lips. You scowl at him, clutching the material of his shirt in your grasp. "And also his friends." You imagine a fight to cause this much harm, and look at the mud all over Dirk's clothes. This was taken to the ground, obviously, a scuffle in the dirt, possibly on the sports field, and on a cold day like this … you'd hate to imagine.

"Well yes, that much is obvious my good man but I can't help but notice that he and his friends most probably returned the favour." You loosen your grip a little, and rest your hand on the one that Dirk has laid on his thigh, "Whilst I fully endorse a nice friendly round of rough housing between chums I don't suppose this is quite as such, is it?"

Dirk frowns through a crusted cut on his lip and laps his tongue over it, "He had it coming. I didn't."

When Dirk fights with people they never have it coming. That's because the closest Dirk ever comes to fighting is wrestling, and he only ever wrestles with you: alone in your bedroom when it always ends up with one of you being pinned to the carpet and making out until you need to pull away to breath.

"I _believe_ you did it for good reason Dirk, but I want to know what good reason that _was_."

"He only punched me when I punched him." he pauses, "I only threw the first punch after he said faggot."

The bottom of your stomach drops out and you find your grip tightening like a vice all over again. Dirk ignores what must be quite the burning pain in his knuckles and twines his fingers with yours, running a crooked thumb over the valley between your thumb and forefinger.

The head teacher's office door flies open, and a clan of scabby boys tumble out attached by the hip. Their hair is matted with blood and sweat and sticks out at absurd angles. Some of them have missing teeth and others broken noses, but all of them look as though to even glance in Dirk's direction would earn them another punch.

You feel some kind of inner victory as they all saunter past without so much as giving a snide look at the two of you holding hands in plain sight. The head teacher calls Dirk in and you wait in cold, terrified silence for twenty minutes as the sound of your heart and your blood echoes in your ears.

You insist that Dirk comes back to your house after school, and you drag him by the hand down the street and to the leafy green cul-de-sac where your house sits in the shadow of a birch tree. Grandma is away visiting old friends this week, and you're almost glad for her absence with Dirk in the state that he is; you can't imagine how much she'd worry if she saw him like this.

You kick a chair out from under the kitchen table and sit him down; scanning over his skin like it's a page from a textbook. He still has the bag of ice from school, now a bag of cold water and the odd slowly waning ice-cube, and he places it aside as you pull a first-aid kit from the cupboard. Dirk is covered in plasters and bandages and butterfly stitches and dabs of disinfectant by the time you're done, and you kiss him countless time on the cheek, running a careful hand through his tousled flaxen locks. He pulls you into a grateful hug and nuzzles his nose against your cheek.

The worst thing is this isn't the first time this has happened.

"You're not invincible, Dirk." You sigh against his shoulder, hands creeping up his back to curl into his shirt, "You can't just fight every imbecile who eggs you on. Homophobic or not taunting is best ignored until you can find a better way to deal with it." That's not true. You're glad Dirk hit them. You're glad he made them realise the mistake they'd made talking like that to him. You're glad they faced the brunt of what they caused but you _hate_ seeing that Dirk had to take his own share of the damage.

"I couldn't just let them get away with that, Jake." The baritone of Dirk's voice rumbles in your ear, and you close your eyes, soothed by the levelness of it all, "I _wouldn't_ just let them get away with it."

You can't hold back the sigh you vocalize and you almost bury your face in Dirk's popped collar when it fogs against the bruised skin of his neck. You wish those bruises were small red ones, placed with care and precision and the heat of your lips against his skin. You kiss his jaw gently, hovering over the sharp line and pressing your nose into the gooseflesh.

"I know you wouldn't."


End file.
